Innovation is a discipline like Marketing and Finance. It needs to be designed, managed and optimized. Creativity is an easy subject to write about but also a difficult one. Creativity is too heavily linked to novelty rather than purposeful creativity that powers up innovation and create positive and sometimes disruptive change. I am looking forward to finish writing this and ...

“Successful innovation is turning ideas into money,” as Innovation expert Nic Hunt so distinctly and accurately describes. Innovation is the ability to convert ideas into value for your company, customers and shareholders. Successful innovation is not a one time deal, but a process that delivers sustained, long term profitability. Any company can develop one or two innovations over the course of time, but having a focused vision will deliver sustainable innovation – producing profitable results for your company time and time again.

I was looking through some ‘sage’ advice from McKinsey on managing in a crisis, in really hard times, and one really got me thinking, so I thought I’d share this. “Use the hard times to concentrate on and strengthen your competitive advantage. If you are confused about this concept, hard times will clarify it. Competitive advantage has two branches, both ...

Whether based on the economy, health care legislation, or changes in purchaser mindset, it may be the perfect time for health care companies to step back from their BHAG’s in order to gain some innovation perspective. Have the big questions changed? Here is a question that may raise eyebrows: What does health care need? Health care needs a healthy dose of innovation. ...

I found an innovation team the other day that spends its life doing pilots Now, don’t get me wrong. That is a perfectly good way to make innovation investments. Pilots are an important outcome of the innovation process because they let an organization “suck it and see” before they take whatever-it-is to a broad base of customers. But I was struck, when talking with this ...

I get this fairly regularly, a senior executive who is in somewhat dire straits. Their firms, once leaders in their industries, neglected R&D, postponed interesting new products and services and failed to innovate consistently. Now, they are no longer the lead dog, and are unhappy with the view from behind. To begin to remedy three to five years of focusing ...

What most distinguishes the innovation high performers from the less innovative is not some indiscernible secret sauce of mental faculties. What distinguishes them is their mindset. That is to say: their attitudes, assumptions and beliefs—their mental models—about how the world works. These mental models are often subconscious. Yet they can have a huge impact on someone’s behavior and therefore how well they perform—and innovate.

Traditional innovation metrics unwittingly undermine long-term success, because they focus senior management on tactics versus strategy. By thinking hard about the correct Input and Output metrics which best reinforce the organization's strategy, innovation leaders have a much better likelihood of personal and institutional success.

Breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes it is the right thing to do. Imagine my surprise when an e-mail from Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix arrived in my inbox this morning announcing that Ms. Netflix was getting an innovation divorce. Yes, Ms. Netflix has decided to send her old man packing and is no longer ashamed ...